topic Re: Line Graphics in Operating System - OpenVMS

Line Graphics

Paul Murray_4 — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:07:29 GMT

Hi All,

Hopefully, this is a very quick question for you ....

I remember back in my ops analyst days, that you could use alternate characters to produce boxes, lines, etc via a normal DCL "write sys$output" command. The result looked similar to the old Digital logo.

Can anyone remember how to get the graphic characters ?

Thanks,
Paul.

Re: Line Graphics

John Abbott_2 — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:14:52 GMT

Try

(0 to turn on
(B to turn off

characters l q k x m j are good at drawing boxes

quick example:

$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT "((0lqqqqqqqqqqk"
$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT "mqqqqqqqqqqj((B"

The VT220 programmer pocket guide is a good ref. sorry don't have a useful link, only a paperback copy.

Kind Regards
John.

Re: Line Graphics

Heinz W Genhart — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:16:14 GMT

Hi Paul

I use a very simple commandfile to create a one line file with some text as required.

$ READ/PROMPT="Enter String >>> "/ERROR=clean_up/END_OF_FILE=clean_up SYS$COMMAND string
$ OPEN/WRITE out c_a.txt
$ esc[0,8] = 27
$ end_char = "''esc'(0x''esc'(B"
$ line1_start = "''esc'#3''esc'[1;7m" + end_char
$ line2_start = "''esc'#4''esc'[1;7m" + end_char
$ line_end = "''end_char'''esc'[m"
$ out_line1 = "''line1_start'"
$ out_line2 = "''line2_start'"
$!
$ cnt = 0
$ len = F$LENGTH(string)
$loop:
$ IF cnt .LT. (len-1)
$ THEN
$ out_line1 = out_line1 + F$EXTRACT(cnt,1,string) + end_char
$ out_line2 = out_line2 + F$EXTRACT(cnt,1,string) + end_char
$ cnt = cnt + 1
$ GOTO loop
$ ELSE
$ out_line1 = out_line1 + F$EXTRACT(cnt,1,string) + line_end
$ out_line2 = out_line2 + F$EXTRACT(cnt,1,string) + line_end
$ GOTO finnish
$ ENDIF
$finnish:
$ WRITE out ""
$ WRITE out "''out_line1'"
$ WRITE out "''out_line2'"
$ CLOSE out
$ TYPE c_a.TXT
$clean_up:
$ EXIT

It creates a file with the name c_a.txt in your default directory. You have to do some customization on this file, so that the string looks as you like

Regards

Heinz

Re: Line Graphics

John Abbott_2 — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:17:32 GMT

Sorry slight typo, only one open round bracket required after each escape sequence, not two as suggested. Note the is one character and not five. Assume you know how to create this.

Re: Line Graphics

Paul Murray_4 — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:17:50 GMT

SUPERB !!!

I knew it would be an easy one to answer !!

Many thanks,
Paul.

Re: Line Graphics

Steven Schweda — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:26:17 GMT

The fine print may be found in a VT100 (or
later) programming manual, as this capability
is really a property of the terminal (or
terminal emulator) being used, rather than
anything about the sending program itself.

Re: Line Graphics

Ian Miller. — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:55:51 GMT

for more infomation about VTxxx terminals and escape sequences than you ever want to know see http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/dec.html

and for those who are really obessed about escape sequences
http://bjh21.me.uk/all-escapes/all-escapes.txt

Re: Line Graphics

Daniel Fernandez Illan — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:37:07 GMT

Paul
The attached document is a collet of escape sequences for ANSI VT100.

Saludos.
Daniel.

Re: Line Graphics

Ian Miller. — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:39:31 GMT

and there is http://www.vt100.net/

Re: Line Graphics

Karl Rohwedder — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 01:13:38 GMT

I've attached a little FORTRAN program together with a DCL wrapper, which reads a input textfile and replace special characters with e.g. linedrawing, bold, underline... escape sequences.
It may produce simple ASCII text, VT100 or PCL sequences.

E.g. if the input looks like

#######
#1#2#3#
#######

the output in textmode looks like

+-+-+-+
|1|2|3|
+-+-+-+

and in VT100 mode accordingly.

If you no not have a FORTRAN compiler I may send you an object file.

I wrote it 20 years ago, so please do not look at the code too close...

regards Kalle

Re: Line Graphics

Paul Murray_4 — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:30:41 GMT

Thanks for all your help.
Paul.